11 year old kills Giant Boar

[Alatar]

Who knew there was a Hogzilla I? Anyway, I went looking for this story online cause I saw it in a local rag.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/oddities/9 ... index.html

The size of the Boar is undoubtedly impressive, but I was more concerned with the following quote:

"It feels really good," Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big."

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Does anyone else find the idea of a child chasing an animal with a gun for sport to be offensive? I don't want to get into the whole gun control debate, or even an anti hunting thing, but surely an 11 year old kid should not be shooting a boar at point blank range, or indeed at distance? If you start to devalue life at such a young age, where killing for fun is considered not just acceptable, but an admirable achievement, where does it stop?

[Primula Baggins]

That particular quote bugged me as well, with its focus on killing. But in many parts of this country, including most of the West, people do still hunt for food. Hunting is a big male ritual and involves a lot of beer and testosterone, yes, but the animals that are killed get cut up and frozen and help to feed the hunters' families throughout the year. So boys learn how to hunt from their fathers, because they'll need to do the same. It's not just wasteful killing, like big game hunters in Africa after trophies alone. Mr. Prim said that giant hog was going to be used for something like 700 pounds of sausage. . . .

[Crucifer]

But still, chasing it for hours, and firing at point blank range at 11? Hmmm...
So when is it too young to start devaluing life?

[truehobbit]

I don't mind skilled hunting if the result is being used for food (although I very much doubt that even in the West people need to hunt to feed their families) - but I still think the hunter should feel a certain amount of consciousness of the killing of a living creature - the disrespect for life as such the child displays is indeed disheartening (though I think the boy can't be blamed if he was made to kill animals from as young as five years of age).

Funnily, I was also reminded of tales from the mythical past, where the heroes-to-be while young children kill huge beasts on a regular basis.
I guess that just shows how much of a cultural achievement it is to go from 'it's twice as big as me but I was able to destroy it, so ain't I great' to 'no killing is reason for light-heartedness'.

Another thing: isn't it rather odd that he went hunting with a revolver?

[Crucifer]

Another thing: isn't it rather odd that he went hunting with a revolver?

Decidedly odd. And not very professional. Almost as if it was sport rather than necessity that was the driving force...

[Primula Baggins]

That could be. I'm not arguing that this was subsistence hunting, just that it does happen.

I'm not a hunter and no one I know hunts. But hunting does help stretch people's food money in the lower income levels, and those are most of the people who hunt. And mostly what they hunt is deer, which are hardly endangered out here. You should see them strolling through my mother's suburban flower garden sampling the roses.

[solicitr]

After all, every pound of 'free range' meat somebody shoots represents one pound less demand on a factory feed lot someplace. Which is more inhumane?

Re: deer. I hear you. They have become a bloody plague here in Virginia, which, it is estimated, has a whitetail population today 50% greater than when Captain John Smith waded ashore. Also one good-sized doe can completely total a '73 Nova (don't ask me how I know this....)

[truehobbit]

Good point about the cruelty of industrially produced meat - but two wrongs don't make one right.

Also one good-sized doe can completely total a '73 Nova (don't ask me how I know this....)

Um - I think that only in the rarest cases is it the deer that runs into the car.

[axordil]

Um - I think that only in the rarest cases is it the deer that runs into the car.

Jumping in front of a car moving at highway speeds at dusk counts as running into the car in my book. The driver of the car is not the one initiating the collision, certainly.

I actually nicked a buck with a minivan once. I managed to brake and swerve just enough so that its hindquarters only caught the passenger side fender. It kept on going, and I only had some fur stuck in the bumper. I was soooooo lucky...

[Alatar]

I really hadn't intended a discussion on the pros and cons of hunting, thats a much larger issue. My real problem was with the fact that such a young child was delighted with killing something. This was not hunting for food, although that was an added bonus. The child was flanked by two guides and the childs' father, all with high powered rifles, who could have put the animal out of its misery, but instead chose to let it suffer for three hours while a child slowly killed it with 8 successive revolver shots. This was "sport" pure and simple. My question remains, when you teach a child to devalue life, where does that lead?

[Crucifer]

Eventually to the Spanish Inquisition, I should think.

[axordil]

Yeah, the more details that show, the ickier it gets.

[Primula Baggins]

That is pretty icky. Hunters are supposed to take pride in killing the animal quickly and keeping it from suffering. If you wound an animal and it runs off, you're supposed to follow it and finish it.

hobby, I think there's a different culture in the "woodsy" parts of the United States and Canada—people see nothing inherently wrong with living off the land to some extent. Out here there is still a lot of roadless wilderness. And not every advantage goes to the hunter; there are animals in the woods that will kill and eat humans, given the chance.

[axordil]

Well, not very often these days. Other than an occasional grizzly or mountain lion attack--very occasional--there's no competitors left to human predation.

[solicitr]

Yup- precisely why the deer population is exploding here. We killed off the wolves and cougars.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, people are careful, but it's still genuinely dangerous to hike in, say, the Yellowstone back country if you don't know how to avoid the dangerous animals. If you're careless, you can still be maimed or killed by a grizzly, or a bison. No, humans aren't part of the food chain, but they still have to keep their eyes open, watching out for fresh bear scat, wolf kills, other danger signs. I've never been able to send my Boy Scout sons off to the woods for a week or ten days, armed only with pepper spray, without a thought or two about that.

[axordil]

It is always possible for a human to die of obliviousness, whether in the back country or on a suburban highway or at the all-you-can-gorge buffet. I would go so far as to say it is the leading uncredited killer of our species.

[Crucifer]

Ho hum. You should never kill off other predators. It causes booms in their prey, which causes dramatic falls in their food, which causes etc.

[solicitr]

Absolutely. Bu of course farmers are farmers the world over, and regard all large predators as threats-to-livestock (true or not). Ironically, we still have plenty of foxes, by far the worst destroyers of poultry and lambs.

[Crucifer]

Yes, but nature is much better at regulating this sort of thing than we are... When humans step in, it gets pretty messed up...